Q&A with Adobe on the future of search

Search marketing is going through a rapid transformation driven by new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Voice Search, Visual Search, Amazon, and Blockchain, impacting how we search for information and buy products and services online.

The Transformation of Search Summit, taking place in New York on October 19 combines the expertise of ClickZ and Search Engine Watch, in partnership with Catalyst (part of GroupM), along with speakers from Hertz, Hilton, Condé Nast, LEGO, and more, to dissect the current landscape and provide a deep-dive into the actionable steps to future-proof and protect your strategy.

This week we sat down with Pete Kluge, Product Marketing Manager at Adobe, to deep dive into his role at Adobe and panel discussion on Google, Amazon, Bing, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Adobe.

ClickZ: Tell us a bit about your role?

Pete Kluge: As Group Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Advertising Cloud, my team leads go-to-market strategy in two key areas:

Search Marketing: Advertising Cloud Search, our own solution, was rebuilt earlier this year with a new UI and features powered by Adobe Sensei to boost ROI for advertisers.

Creative Management: Advertising Cloud Creative, which also debuted earlier this year, gives marketers control over basic design elements—including advertising copy and assets used in display ads—to allow for the rapid rollout of new messaging and design without the painful and expensive steps of re-trafficking or starting the design process over from scratch.

In addition to driving strategy, my team partners with sales and account services to support clients, deliver business growth, understand customer challenges, and evangelize our products through education and thought leadership.

CZ: What are your key priorities over the next 12 months?

PK: Key priorities for Advertising Cloud Search include: expanding on data and audience integrations with Adobe Experience Cloud and external partners, as well as enhancing AI-driven performance optimizations by leveraging our unique data access. This includes a full rollout of features powered by Adobe Sensei—Adobe’s framework for artificial intelligence and machine learning—such as performance optimizations, performance forecasting, and spend recommendations.

On the creative side of the business, a key priority for the next year is to continue to grow adoption of the platform through greater awareness and thought leadership as well as to deepen existing integrations to allow for seamless collaboration between creatives, marketers, and media buyers.

CZ: What is your biggest challenge in achieving these?

PK: The biggest challenge from a product marketing perspective lies in taking difficult and complex concepts and creating stories and messaging that fully convey the value of our offering to advertisers in a way that is easy to understand. Since Adobe offers such a comprehensive marketing stack that spans many parts of a brand organization—from the CIO to the CTO, CMO on down to practitioners like media buyers and creatives—helping customers connect the dots to drive results is a key part of our role.

CZ: What’s your advice to those that may be facing a similar challenge?

PK: My advice would be to understand your customer’s challenges. The closer you are to clients and their unique goals—which often vary not only by industry but brand history, perception, and a host of variables—the more you can help them leverage technology to drive great experiences.

CZ: What’s the most interesting trend you are you seeing in the market right now?

PK: Delivering great experiences that transcend whatever product a brand is selling is a key trend we’ve helped shape, and are uniquely-suited to solve. Making advertising more connected to marketing strategy through technology is a key part of how we’re doing that.

CZ: How is this going to change in the medium and long term?

PK: The technology to deliver relevant marketing experiences across channels, formats, and screens is continually evolving and improving. We’ve seen consolidation in the industry moving away from point solutions to integrated advertising and marketing stacks that make it seamless to access and share data and audiences across channels for delivery of personalized experiences.